Yet another Process Thread

I have been lurking on Gigposters.com for the past year and a half, taking in as much info as possible and I would like to return the favor by contributing a process thread. So here goes...

I decided to do a 4-color poster for the upcoming Don Cab show at The Bluebird(STL) on Sept. 3rd. Recently, the wife and I have been crazy busy with the start up of the new shirt printing division, so I did not have a whole lot of time to crank out a design. With just two weeks to go, I decided to dive into the sketchbooks and ran into some ideas that I have been doodling for a while. Cattle Skulls. Do not ask me why, but I have had this fascination with drawing cattle skulls for the past few weeks. It did not seem to fit with the show very well, but I said screw it, and rolled with it anyways.

ORIGINAL MOCHUP-
At my "real" job, I am kind of limited on supplies, but with the use of a Bic, Sharpie, and various highlighers, I am able to come up with some detailed rough drafts. Sorry for some crappy pics. I had to use two different cameras through this process.

Three days later, I finally find the time to begin cleaning everything up and finishing the layout. We decided to take New Belgium's 1554 along for the journey. This turns out to be a great decision.

PRE-PRESS-
After we get all of the seperations printed on transparency via; the beautiful Epson 1400, we begin exposing the screens.

Unfortunately, we do not have a vacuum top to seal the screens to the glass, so I have a mirror that lays across the squeegee side of the screen to weigh everything down. I also apply light pressure just to be safe.

After the exposure, we begin spraying out the screen, revealing the stencil. We currently do not have a wash out booth in the shop, so we are spraying outside. Prior to walking outside, I make sure to blast each side of the screen with a spray bottle of water. This seems to help kill additional exposure under sunlight. For the sprayout, we began using our power washer without power. It seems to give me the perfect pressure while mainting a tight stream.

Let those babies dry.

While all the screens are drying, it is time to begin mixing the inks. I use a Pantone Swatch to give me a rough idea of what I need to do, after that it is just eyeballing it to get the desired hue. Speedball, you smell so good!

PRESS
Since my camera died on me, I missed out on the first color, which is the sand at the bottom left of the image. I actually used one screen for the first color and second color. I just taped off the portion of the screen that I was not using. This made things move fast since I did not have to re-register for the second color.

The second color is a split fountain that goes from yellow to orange. This is my second attempt at a split fountain, the first one being just shy of a disaster. This time around, we nailed it!